Assassin’s Creed Shadows – 10 More Details We’ve Learned About it

Ubisoft has taken a severe beating in recent years, having sustained a line of prominent failures – either critical or commercial or both – including the likes of Star Wars Outlaws, Skull and Bones, XDefiant, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (which, by the way, was excellent), and many others. Assassin’s Creed, of course, is the one IP that the publisher has always relied on first and foremost, which is why it has taken measures you wouldn’t ordinarily expect it to to ensure that the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t end up meeting the same fate as those aforementioned games. Delayed twice from its original November 2024 launch date and now due out in March, the open world action RPG has been on the receiving end of plenty of skepticism- though a newly published round of extensive hands-on previews suggests that there’s actually plenty of reason to be excited and optimistic.

That round of previews has also brought with it a bunch of new details. As Assassin’s Creed Shadows approaches its March release and we continue to cross off the days, here, we’re going to take a look at some of those details.

STORY DETAILS

We’ve known for a while that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will see us stepping into the shoes of African Samurai Yasuke – the first protagonist in the series to be a real historical figure – and the shinobi Naoe, but recent previews have brought more detail. The game begins with Yasuke being brought to Japan by Portuguese slavers, following which Oda Nobunaga takes him into his service and makes him a samurai. Naoe, meanwhile, is the (fictional) daughter of the real life shinobi Fujibayashi Nagato. Her own story begins with an attack from an enemy faction, a personal tragedy, and a mysterious box that she had been charged with protecting is stolen. How Naoe and Yasuke’s paths intersect remains to be seen, but both characters will be working together to fight against the factions who are opposing the unification of Japan.

CANON MODE

Like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla before it, Shadows will allow players to make dialogue choices and determine the direction of the story at certain junctures. As an alternative, however, the game is also introducing an entirely new feature in the form of Canon Mode- which is exactly what it sounds like. Canon Mode will take player choice out of the equation and will instead tell a defined, scripted story which, as the mode’s name suggests, will be the canon story for the experience.

HOW SWITCHING WORKS

Switching between two characters at any time will be one of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ key features, but how exactly does it work? Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and GTA 5 may have spoiled us with their seamless (or near-seamless) switching, but that’s not quite how it’ll work in Shadows. As detailed in Polygon’s preview, to switch between Yasuke and Naoe, you’ll have to enter the menu, go to your equipment screen, and press and hold a button. It’s not instantaneous, and you can’t switch when you’re in an enemy’s vicinity or during combat.

FIXING MAP BLOAT

Multiple Assassin’s Creed games in a row have been criticized for having bloated maps, not only due to their massive sizes, but also the overwhelming amount of icons and side activities populating those maps. Shadows is looking to fix that in several ways. Developers have, of course, stressed multiple times over the months that the game is much smaller than Valhalla, instead instead being roughly equivalent to Origins’ size (which is still pretty damn large, of course). On top of that, recent previews have also revealed that the game has also continued to refine its approach to parsing out and presenting side content. Synchronizing with viewpoints, for instance, will only reveal the “important” locations on the map, according to Engadget’s preview.

Meanwhile, speaking to GamesRadar, creative director Jonathan Dumont explained that traversal and exploration will be less focused on stringing players alone from one side activity to the next, with more of an emphasis instead being placed on taking in the level of detail of the environments. “The travel time is a little different – it’s not a point of interest [followed immediately by another] point of interest, [every] 50 meters,” he said. “There’s more open, natural landscaping that will be a little bit longer to travel, but when you get to a place there’s a lot more to it. The scale ratio changed from Odyssey, and what we had done before, and then just the fidelity of trying to make incredible attention to detail in the environment, so that we craft the crap out of it.”

SKETCHING WILDLIFE

Speaking of side activities, you can expect Assassin’s Creed Shadows to introduce some new kinds to fit better with its new setting and tone. One in particular will see players engaging with wildlife in an unusual way- rather than hunting animals, you’ll now be sneaking up on them in the wild so you can sketch them in your journal.

CLAWS OF AWAJI EXPANSION

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will, of course, receive extensive post-launch support, as Assassin’s Creed games tend to, and Ubisoft has offered a first look at the first planned expansion. Titled Claws of Awaji, it will launch later this year and will be free to everyone who has pre-ordered the base game. Said to be over 10 hours long, it will feature a new location, story content, weapons, skills, and more.

PC FEATURES

On PC, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is promising an expansive suite of features. Support is confirmed for DLSS 3.7, FSR 3.1, and XeSS 2, as well as ultrawide resolutions, uncapped frame rates, and more. On the platform, the game will also tour ray traced global illumination and reflections, in addition to featuring a benchmark tool for performance analysis.

PC REQUIREMENTS

Ubisoft has also revealed system requirements for Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PC across eight different setups. On the lowest possible settings, you’ll be able to run the game at 1080p and 30 FPS, requiring either an i7 8700K or a Ryzen 5 3600, along with either a GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB), a Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB), or an Arc A580 (8 GB). On the opposite end, the highest possible settings – which will run the game at 4K and 60 FPS with full ray tracing support – will require either an i7 13700K or a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, as well as a GeForce RTX 4080 (16 GB). Across all setups, you’ll also need 16 GB of RAM and an SSD.

ACCESSIBILITY

Shadows’ full suite of accessibility features have also been detailed, and it’s quite extensive. On the visual side of things, the game will feature colourblind options, screen narration, and full HUD customization. Other options include aim assistance, subtitles (of course), four unique difficulty settings for stealth and combat each, a mode that simplifies combat to a single input, full controls remapping and a variety of camera options, a guided mode to streamline exploration and traversal, and more.

ANIMUS HUB

Remember Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the hub that was supposed to tie Assassin’s Creed together going forward. Ubisoft has now officially unveiled it. Unimaginatively dubbed the Animus Hub, it will launch on March 20 alongside Shadows, and will also be tied to all Assassin’s Creed titles release after (and including) Origins. The hub will feature exclusive free content that players will unlock by playing the actual games, give out rewards, and more. It’s not a standalone launcher, but Ubisoft says it has “ambitious” plans for how to evolve and grow the Animus Hub. Interestingly, those plans might also be tied to advancing the series’ modern-day storyline, though details are currently scarce.